GENERAL TREATMENT. 67 



domestication has tended, in some degree, to curtail the period, 

 but not so much as might be expected^, considering the powerful 

 operation of artificial habits. 



THE GENERAL TREATMENT OF DOGS AS 

 PREVENTIVE OF DISEASE. 



The prevention of disease, it is evident, is an important con- 

 sideration ; and, as such, it may with propriety precede the cure. 

 To guard against the loss of health, we must carefully regulate 

 the essential habits of life of the animals we domesticate. Thus, 

 with our dogs, we attend to their feeding, housing, cleanliness, 

 and exercise. We must also examine their condition, on which 

 both their ordinary health, and their capabihty for such services 

 as we require of them, will much depend. 



The feeding of dogs. — This is necessarily an object of im- 

 portance, not only as regards the wants of the animal, but also as 

 respects the different quantities and qualities of food under dif- 

 ferent circumstances. A great error is committed when we feed 

 our dogs on one scale: suih as giving the dog that has slept 

 through the day the same quantity as is set before the pointer 

 that has been hunting incessantly four or five hours. In quality, 

 likewise, equal error is committed : the latter of these dogs would 

 digest, with readiness and benefit to his constitutiona][ wants, a 

 pound or two of horse-flesh ; but the former would be injured by 

 such treatment, and would be more appropriately fed with meal or 

 potatoes mixed with milk or pot-liquor. It is no less curious than 



^ Buffon calculates the length of life in the dog from the time of his growth 

 " La duree de la vie est dans le chien, comnie dans les autres animaux, pro'- 

 " portionelle au temps de I'accroissement ; il est environ deux ans a, croitre, ils 

 vit aussi sept fois deux ans." — Buffon^ Hist. Nat., torn, v, 223. 



^lian considers fourteen years as the natural period of life in dogs. — ^lian 

 de Nat. Animal., lib. iv, c. 4L 



Some of the ancients have stated that a diiFerence exists in the duration of 

 life between the sexes, but experience justifies no such distinction. — Arrianus 

 de Venatione, c. 32. 



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